How to deal with an angry ex when you have anxiety

Here are my top 3 tips for maintaining your strength and dignity and staying in alignment with your own values while dealing with difficult people…

I received an email the other day from a lady who experiences anxiety but also is going through some really hardcore stuff in her life with some dramatic life changes and as part of that, she is dealing with a constantly angry ex.

In this case, it’s her ex-husband and he is just blaming her for everything and can’t seem to control his temper and is just a nightmare for her to deal with.

And of course, this is causing her anxiety up through the roof so she contacted me just for some guidance on how to deal with this person in her life. So I thought the best way to do it is to do a blog about it.

Watch the video or continue reading below…

I have had exes in my life, I am lucky that I seem to have had fairly reasonable people as my exes and my relationships ended quite amicably.

But I get that that’s not the case for a lot of people particularly when you’ve been in a long term relationship with someone and especially when there are kids involved so I get that it’s hard.

It’s hard.

I do have close personal friends that are going through this as well so there’s a bit of insight there as well just seeing what they’re going through, the trauma that they are going through.

But I just want to outline some steps that will help you regain your power and just make this transition a little less traumatic for you in the longer term.

Step 1: Check -in with yourself (grounding)

Step number one, when you’re dealing with someone who is irrational and showing narcissistic traits and abusive, not physically…mental is abusive as well.

It is common for people to no longer realize who they are or what their own emotions are anymore.

And what many people said to me is “I spent so much of my life walking on eggshells and making the environment around my ex a place that they could be contained in. I was so busy cleaning the mess around him that I lost my self in the process.”

There is a word for this, it’s called “co-dependency.” It’s where one person creates an environment for another person to act out in. This enables the other person to continue their negative behavior.

So, really, the first step is to check in with yourself, find yourself again and really connect again with yourself and I get that this can take time.

I get that when you’ve lost track of who you are and what you stand for, that really can take some time to find again.

And then once your energy is grounded, you will just find, quite naturally, without too much effort at all, you will begin to get little nudges again of, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. I like that type of movie/book/conversation.” Or, “Oh yeah, that’s right. I do like hanging out in the garden.” Or, “I do enjoy playing the guitar.” “I do enjoy that type of food which I hadn’t been allowed to eat for so long because my ex doesn’t like spicy food,” for example.

So, grounding yourself, grounding your energy, that’s the first step of step one. In finding yourself again, checking in with yourself, just finding some stillness in this craziness that your ex is putting you through.

Step 2: Check where you are on the narcissism cycle

Step two is to understand where you are in a narcissism cycle.

Now, it’s important to note that your ex doesn’t need to be a full-blown narcissist to display narcissistic tendency.

I believe that narcissism is a spectrum.

And on one end, you get your full on sociopathic narcissistic nightmares that just seem to have zero conscience and will do whatever it takes to get whatever he needs.

And on the other end, you’ve got your all-around good guys. (And they do exist.) Good men do definitely exist out there who might look at themselves in the mirror a little bit too much. Not that that’s serious narcissism. It’s a spectrum, I believe.

I think everyone is guilty of displaying narcissistic traits from time to time and I believe that they are probably learnt in childhood, their tactics that kids have sued in their lives to get their own way, you know? Like the tantrum becomes the man-trum. That’s a different story altogether. I will cover it off in another blog.

But the trick for you right now is to see where you are in the narcissistic cycle. So, in my belief, as well as it being a spectrum, the narcissistic pattern goes in a figure 8. Feels like a roller coaster.

So, here you are in the middle. The narcissist starts using you for narcissistic supply. They lift you up, they’re being nice to you.

They seem to be reasonable about taking the kids at the weekend or swapping the weekend with you or doing something that you want to do.

And then once they feel like you owe them, they come down like this and they use it against you.

They bring it up in a fight and make your life really difficult and bring you down and really crush you and things are really terrible and you might break contact for a little bit.

And then out of the blue, they know, they seem maybe they’re not quite so angry anymore. And they seem to be fairly reasonable and they forgot about that big fight that you had and things seem to be okay.

They seem pretty reasonable at the moment and really easy to deal with, so maybe you might have dinner with them or perhaps have a conversation with them about something that means a lot to you and then they use that against you when you have a fight.

And they use it as an argumentative tool, they use it to attack you, they turn your friends against you.

They really play a nasty game about it so you no longer talk to them again.

And then out of the blue, they seem to have forgotten about it again.

So, you can see – using you for supply, getting what they want out of you and then using it against you to try and build up their own sense of power in this situation.

Know where you are on the cycle and stop being sucked in because it will go on forever for as long as you let it.

Narcissists are managed by their victims. They lack the insight to manage themselves. They will never change. The only thing you can do, is take your power back by preventing their actions from impacting you.

So, knowing where you are on a narcissistic cycle will allow you to play their game by your rules: When you’re on an up, you know not to give them too much, and you won’t let them use you for supply. You don’t trust them. Give them just enough to make them feel like you’re playing the game but make sure it’s by your rules so when it comes to the inevitable downfall, they don’t have as much to use against you.

So, just know where you are – and that will help you get off that cycle.

So many people have got kids with these people. It’s really hard not to have to deal with them so you have no choice but to deal with a narcissistic ex, you just need to know where you are on that cycle, be aware of it and just protect yourself from it.

Step 3: Get witchy

Thirdly – and this is an energy healing hack, shall we say – if it’s over, if it’s definitely over between you and you don’t want anything more to do with him romantically and you would just like all of those feelings of anger and making you feel bad all the time kind of frozen, you might want to think about writing his name on a piece of paper and putting it in the freezer.

It sounds really silly but give it a try. If it’s over, it’s finished, if it’s done, if you don’t want any more emotional engagements with him, write his name on a piece of paper, put it in the freezer.

I’ve done this numerous times with people, not with exes but with other people in my life, and it has worked every single time within a month. Give it a go, I highly recommend it.

You might even want to say this affirmation while you do it, to give the spell intention some real juice:

Well – I’m sorry your ex is being so difficult. These tips will give you power to know how he operates and what your next moves should be. Go get the grounding mp3 which will really help you just to get back in touch with yourself again. Also, while you’re over there, see what else I’ve got over there for you as well, I’ve got a whole library of mp3 healing tracks.